Will the Original Annie Maclean Stand?
by CNJ
Summary: Based on the film Horse Whisperer. Annie's thoughts one night during her and Grace's stay in Montana at the creek house, the night she's reading the book Queenie and is getting ready to sleep. A one-shot ficlet.


This one-shot is based on the film _Horse Whisperer_, which I loved. Too bad not many people have written _Horse Whisperer_ fanfic; maybe this will inspire more fans to write _Horse Whisperer_ fanfic and perhaps clamor to get a category added for _Horse Whisperer_.

I especially was fascinated by the character of Annie Maclean...so tough, so take-charge, yet rather fragile, very sensitive, and frightened at the same time. This is just a short piece of her thoughts during one of her sleep-troubled nights when she is at the creek house, the night she's reading the book _Queen_ and she's taking off her glasses to go to sleep. Just a note saying that the characters are not mine, nor is Annie's storyline, but my writing itself is...enjoy!

**Will the Original Annie Maclean Stand?  
**

_By_: CNJ

_PG-13_

I thought I would sleep after I took off my glasses and turned out the lamp, but I still didn't. My sleep is seldom smooth. I almost always wake up at three or four in the morning and often can't get back to sleep. A thousand thoughts run through my mind and I sometimes get restless and nervous.

But I've always known, deep down inside that I am a nervous person. _Bad nerves_, one of my primary school teachers told my mum. She wasn't the only one; I was often known is a child in school as having fragile nerves. I was often squirmy, shaky and cried easily. I was afraid of so many things that didn't frighten other kids. I escaped into books and often had problems fitting in with other kids, who often made fun of me. I knew I was different, considered strange.

Mum and Dad tried to overlook my difference and sometimes told me I was gifted. I guess. I wrote for my secondary school newspaper and teachers told me that I wrote the best poems and drew the best pictures.

When I was a very little girl, I always wanted to do three things when I grew up...be an author, have lots of children, maybe seven or eight of them, and make a lot of money because you need money to support kids. Until I was around twelve, I'd imagined myself typing my books, having my books line my shelves and selling in stores, and being surrounded by a lot of kids and having a huge, loving family around me.

Thinking now tonight, here in this strange area of the States, so vast and open and full of all these animals, away from the city, I realize that I feel as if I am split into two parts of me. I first felt that split when I was twelve and my beloved dad died of a heart attack much too young.

My brother, George, my sister, Frances, and I had been staying in Jamaica that January, one month after I had just turned twelve, when we'd gotten the bad news in the middle of the night. We'd been flown to London, all three of us in shock. None of us cried right away, even when our mum greeted us with hugs and tears.

It was only during the ceremony two days later when I finally saw my father's body that I started to cry. It had then sunk in that my dear dad was truly dead; he was so special to me. I remember just standing there, weeping, his corpse and the casket blurring through my tears. George had tried to pull me away, but I jerked out of his reach and kept crying. I think it was my crying that toppled my siblings into tears also.

I don't really know how long we stood there by the casket in tears. Mum had joined us and we cried for what felt like hours. It wasn't until the funeral began that we managed to pull ourselves away and sit shakily in the benches, more silent now, but our tears still falling.

George, Frances, and I had to live with our grandparents for a few months afterward while Mum got Dad's affairs in order and tried to best she could to pull herself together. Mum had even been more devastated than us children since she'd loved Dad very much.

I could even today feel tears gather in my eyes at this memory. I closed my eyes, trying to will my tears away and listened to the unfamiliar Montana sounds outside...so vastly different from New York City. I didn't wipe my eyes, because I know that when I try to wipe my eyes when they are full of tears, my tears spill over and I start crying fully. I wanted to sleep, not cry now.

So since my dad's tragic death, I feel this split in me and it makes my ironically wonder if I have a split personality...one Annie Graves Maclean, the wonder editor of _Cover_ magazine of New York city, the wealthy sophisticate, the take-charge, no-nonsense leader who is quick, decisive, and ambitious, the one who is also a successful wife and mother also, the one who has the weekend house in upstate New York. The put-together, has-her-act-together, knows-it-all-Annie that is not afraid to show herself to the world.

Then there is the other Annie...the secret Annie, who is frightened, unsure, lonely, unhappily married, lacking confidence in so many other areas including whether she's really a good mum, the nervous wreck who can't stay asleep at night, who gloomily wonders how her life has strayed so far from her original dreams. The sad Annie who still secretly mourns her father's death thirty years later and can't seem to recover from it. The Annie who does often cry at night.

The lost Annie who is unsure of just where she belongs. The Annie who is so afraid of too many things, the Annie who is even a touch afraid of her own husband sometimes. The Annie whose husband mocks her behind closed doors while charming outsiders. The Annie who takes sleeping pills that really don't work well. The Annie who secretly has quiet anxiety attacks and fears she won't make it through another day. The Annie who feels weird, odd, different just as she did in school. The Annie who feels "off" and out of sync with the world. The Annie who is afraid of the dark, so afraid that she now has a flashlight on her nightstand. The Annie who is wracked my many fears.

The Annie who wanted to be a writer, but lacks the courage to pursue that dream. The Annie who wanted lots of children, but her body failed and she could not have any more than one. The Annie who can't face her fears with her own husband and instead stays in an empty, barren marriage because she lacks the will to either leave or talk things out with Robert.

The Annie who is so afraid to show herself to the world that she hides behind the first part of Annie.

The uncertain shaky Annie who fears for her future and that of her family, which seems to be falling apart. The Annie who feels fear that her husband won't be with her much longer and wonders how much longer her marriage will last. Also the Annie who fears failing as a mother...perhaps that is her worst fears, of losing her beloved daughter, failing with her. Because she especially feels overwhelming guilt over the accident her daughter and her daughter's horse had that brought them all the way out here.

I lay there feeling myself shiver over these thoughts and thought over how I'd been masking my many fears and uncertainly with the first part of me, the bossy, controlling Annie. But now, bit by bit, the control facade is slipping away and the shy, fragile-nerved, lost Annie is peering through. And I am not sure what to do about it.

I realized that I was shaking and feeling overwhelmed by all these thoughts. I needed something to calm me down, so I got up, felt my way to the kitchen of the creek house, turned on the light, letting my breath out in relief at the light and made myself a tea. I'm trying to drink more decaffeinated, since I suspect caffeine is already making my nerves worse than they already are.

Thinking over this past month, I think of the progress Grace and Pilgrim have made since the accident. Tom is now having Grace stroke Pilgrim and Pilgrim no longer jumps or neighs when someone gently touches him. That's remarkable considering when Grace, Pilgrim, and I first came, Grace was silent, moody, and still devastated over Judith's death and the accident and Pilgrim could not bear to have anyone come near him, let alone touch him.

Perhaps this accident could be a turning point for Robert and me as well as Grace. Even now, Grace and I were feeling closer than we'd been in a long time. Before the accident, I'd feared my dear daughter was moving away from me, distancing herself from me and that triggers deep fears in me that maybe she'd seen through my facade of having all the answers and that she'd lose respect for me once she saw the timid coward that I truly feel like inside.

How it had hit me when she'd angrily told me in the car on the way here, _You just act like you do_ when I'd told her _I don't have all the answers_. At the time, I'd felt like I'd just been stripped right there and had had to go toward the gravesite we'd been next to and just cry for a long time.

Now I realize my daughter is right on target there. She's a very smart, perceptive girl. Perhaps, like Pilgrim and Grace facing their fears and accident wounds, maybe it's time for me to get on the stick and begin facing my many fears instead of avoiding them. I finished my tea and headed back to bed, still trembling a little, but beginning to formulate a plan to re-unite the split Annie, even if it meant facing my fears and insecurities. I want to feel whole again and not so lost and fearful.

_2008 Storyline Copyright by **CNJ **_


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